That'll Be the Day
by Calistabelle
Summary: Based in the world of Surrogates. In a world where no one is who they appear to be, she walks alone in a crowded city. One-shot


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**That'll Be the Day**

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Trisha was twelve. She had brownish hair that sort-of curled but mostly flopped about her shoulders. She was painfully thin and small for her age. She lived on the streets.

It wasn't as though her parents were dead. They weren't. They were alive and well. Well… if you could call _that_ living. She could gaze out across a busy market square, full of people buying, selling, talking, laughing… and not see a single living being. That was why she ran away. Because she didn't want to be a robot. She wanted to be _alive_.

Occasionally she'd return to her old neighbourhood. She'd see the old posters of herself, half torn away and looking nothing like her. Once in a while she'd catch a glimpse of the robot that had once been her dad. He was tall, blonde and handsome. He used to have an easy smile, but she hadn't seen it for three years. She guessed his smile didn't come so easily anymore.

Her real dad hadn't been blonde. Not really. He'd been a strange sort of brown colour, with streaks of what was sometimes blonde when the light hit it about right. It usually just looked like the same faded brown she had, though. He wasn't as muscled as the robot either. He'd once played rugby fairly often with some old college friends, but even that had become less frequent, until his belly wobbled rather than rippled.

Trisha never saw the robot that had once been her mother. Even if she crept up to the house she'd once lived in and pressed her face to the window in an effort to see her. Sometimes she thought maybe her robot-mother was very different from her actual mother and she didn't recognise it. Most of the time she didn't care. Couldn't care.

She'd almost died, once, about three and a half years ago. It had been at the point when half the population had robots and half didn't. Her dad did, but she and her mum didn't. Her dad needed one for work. But he'd only used it for his frequent over-seas work. It was stored in a container in continental Europe. It moved about as his work did. Other than that her family had stayed away from the robot-fad. They didn't condemn it, but they didn't support it either.

Then Trisha had almost died. She'd gone swimming at the beach with some friends for a ninth birthday party when the waves had become unexpectedly stronger and she'd been dragged under, once, twice, three times until she'd almost given up hope of ever drawing a proper breath again. Then she'd been saved by on of the robot-lifeguards.

The day after her parents bought themselves, and her, full-time controllers and robots.

She'd tried it for a little while, but it was like playing a computer game. She would sit and stare and twiddle and _act_ but it was only a game. It wasn't _real_, it wasn't _life_. And, like any child given a new toy, it was only a matter of time before she grew bored with it.

Her robot-parents didn't notice for a while. In fact, no one noticed until she fell over in the playground and grazed her knee. When she was told off for being _real_, for being _alive_ she ran away. Not just like that, of course. After weeks, months, of being told that she should, that she must, that it was true, she ran. Ran fast and hard.

Trisha soon learnt how to steal. Just little things that people didn't notice. The odd fiver, an apple, a hot meal. She learnt how to disguise herself in a world where no one wore their true face. She tried to live in the humans-only reserve for a while, but _they_ were often worse than the robots were. The robots might be fake, but at least they were normal. At least they didn't shun humanity and live by no morals. The 'humans' - they seemed so eager to give up anything even resembling humanity, just to prove they weren't robots.

After the second robot burning, Trisha left the reserve. She went back to living on the street.

It was strange. She was able to pick out the odd face in the crowd that she knew was human. She'd go up to them, sometimes, and ask. They'd smile at her, humour her, walk away. They thought she was taking the mickey. Trisha thought that they were stupid.

She was very, very alone in that huge, bustling city. But she didn't feel lonely - how could she? She lived off the heartbeat. The endless hum of electricity that was the new heartbeat of the city. The electricity made her feel so alive, like it was coursing through _her_, making her live and breathe. She didn't begrudge the others of their game of life. It just seemed so childish to her.

Trisha knew, one day, that the game would stop working. That there would be a flaw in this oh-so-perfect system. She knew that they'd grow tired of it eventually. Humans lived off exhilaration, off fear and excitement and each other. One day, they would grow bored of their crystal bubbles and smash them, and wonder at the hurt they felt when that crystal cut their fists.

One day the game wouldn't work and they'd be real again. Trisha looked forward to that day. Because that would be the day when her parents would come back. That would be the day when she could go _home._ The day the world woke from its stupidity and craziness.

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_AN: Went to watch this over a month ago. This popped just into my head. It's been sitting around in my files for a while now, so I thought I'd upload. Enjoy?_

_Much love,  
Cal  
xx_


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